Rick Santorum Suspends His Campaign

Rick Santorum must have had a change of heart in deciding to stay in the race to now dropping out of the race because prior to his announcement that he was suspending his campaign, Rick Santorum called Mitt Romney to concede the race. In response to this news, Mitt Romney praised Rick Santorum for being an “able and worthy competitor." Newt Gingrich has stubbornly refused to drop out of the race and is courting Rick Santorum's supporters to back him in the race: 

Newt Gingrich praised Rick Santorum’s “remarkable campaign” Tuesday after the former Pennsylvania senator bowed out of the presidential race, and Gingrich invited Santorum’s supporters into his own camp.

“I am committed to staying in this race all the way to Tampa so that the conservative movement has a real choice,” Gingrich said in a statement. “I humbly ask Senator Santorum’s supporters to visit Newt.org to review my conservative record and join us as we bring these values to Tampa. We know well that only a conservative can protect life, defend the Constitution, restore jobs and growth and return to a balanced budget.”

Gingrich has conceded he has little chance of securing the 1,144 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination outright. Late last month, his campaign announced it was shedding a third of its staff, and the former House speaker also has pledged to back front-runner Mitt Romney, if Romney becomes the nominee.

But Gingrich is holding out hope that he can attract enough votes from Santorum supporters to prevent Romney from reaching 1,144 delegates before August and that he can win the GOP nomination at a contested Republican National Convention.

However, Newt Gingrich's chances of getting enough delegates to become the Republican nominee or force a brokered convention is slim or impossible. Currently, Romney has 661 delegates while Newt Gingrich only has 136 delegates. Even if Rick Santorum gave all of his 285 delegates to Newt, he would only have 421 delegates. As a result, he would still be far behind Mitt Romney. However, it is not likely that Newt Gingrich will pick up any more delegates since his campaign is so in debt that they can't even afford the $500 check to get on the Utah ballot. I highly doubt Newt can wage a competitive campaign that would seriously challenge Mitt Romney. 

If you're wondering what will happen to Rick Santorum's delegates now that he's out of the race, you'll be surprised to learn that Rick Santorum cannot gift his delegates to any competitor but will become free agents in which they can support any candidates they choose: 

Santorum has 285 delegates, according to the latest ABC News delegate estimate, second to Mitt Romney’s 661. He captured the majority of them by winning 10 states–11 if you count Missouri’s nonbinding primary, which the candidate counted in his bowing-out speech today.

But some of those delegates were never really “his.”  ABC estimates that 78 Santorum delegates, from his wins in states that don’t “award” their delegates – Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota, and North Dakota, would have been free to support any candidate at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Another two of Santorum’s delegates were Republican National Committee superdelegates, who will attend the convention by virtue of their positions in the party, and are also free to support whomever they choose in Tampa.

Santorum won seven more delegates from unbound caucus states Washington and Wyoming.

He won another 10 delegates from Illinois, where they would not be required by state or national-party rule to vote for Santorum in Tampa, either, although Santorum’s campaign presented their names and qualifying signatures to the state board of elections.

That leaves 188 Santorum delegates heading to Tampa. They’ll be required to vote for him, unless he chooses to release them, according to state-party rules.

Even if Santorum endorses Romney, that doesn’t mean he can gift all of his delegates to his former rival.  Should Santorum elect to release his delegates, they’ll become free agents, able to support whichever candidate they choose.

I think a majority of Santorum's delegates will ultimately back Mitt Romney. Some will still vote for Santorum at the Republican convention while others will support Newt Gingrich. However, now that Rick Santorum is out of the race, it is safe to say that the 2012 primary elections are over and Mitt Romney will become the Republican challenger to President Obama. 

Rick Santorum Back On The Campaign Trail

Rick Santorum has spent some time contemplating on if he would stay in the race or not and he's made his decision. He's staying in the race: 

After a five-day break to celebrate Easter, help care for his sick daughter and thrash out strategy, Santorum kicks off the fight for his home state, Pennsylvania, in earnest on Tuesday.

He needs to win the state by a decent margin to stay in the race against Romney, whose allies have already begun negative TV attacks against the conservative former senator.

Santorum holds a rally in Bedford on Tuesday and then addresses his alma mater Penn State Dickinson School of Law, dampening talk he is near to quitting the race.

"Clearly, once we get campaigning, then that will certainly quiet any talk of us doing anything other than moving full-speed ahead," campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said.

Speculation that Santorum could be headed for the exit increased last Thursday when he held a strategy meeting with conservative leaders.

The meeting with conservative and evangelical leaders did not go as well as Santorum would have liked:

Rick Santorum, who rose in the polls thanks to enthusiastic support from Christian conservatives, faced pressure Sunday from a key Republican evangelical to end his increasingly long-shot White House bid.

Richard Land, a top official with the powerful Southern Baptist Convention, urged Santorum to abandon the race and throw his support to frontrunner Mitt Romney to increase Republicans' chances of defeating Barack Obama in November.

"Rick's a good friend. I like Rick a lot," Land told CBS "Face the Nation" program on Sunday.

But he said, "as his friend I would say to him, 'you know, you ought to seriously consider leaving the race now'," the prominent Baptist clergyman said.

...

But after their candidate failed to pick up sufficient steam to seize the nomination, Christian conservatives met again with Santorum last week, to strategize about how they should proceed going forward.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, trounced Santorum in primaries held last week in Washington, DC, Wisconsin and Maryland, lending additional credence to his case that he will be the party's inevitable pick.

Land told CBS that the tea leaves appeared not to favor Santorum -- although he left open the possibility that he could be a strong contender for a future Republican party nomination.

"In eight years he'll be three years younger than Romney is now," said Land.

He added, however, that "running for president is a very personal decision, when to get out is a very personal decision, and he's going to have to make that," Land told CBS.

Ebbing support among Christian leaders would come at a bad time for Santorum, who has denied rumors that he is plotting his exit from the race to avoid what could be an embarrassing loss in his home state of Pennsylvania.

With the Pennsylvania primary only a few weeks away, the window of opportunity to have a graceful exit from the campaign will shut and he will face an embarrassing loss in Pennsylvania.  Mitt Romney is ahead in the polls in Pennsylvania and ahead in the polls nationally. Even if Rick Santorum manages to win in his home state, the primaries in May will not go as well as he thinks it will. If Santorum loses in Pennsylvania, then he should drop out of the race immediately. 

Is Rick Santorum In Or Out Of The 2012 Race?

 There is some speculation that Rick Santorum will be dropping out soon given that he may not win any delegates in Pennsylvania and that there has been no campaign activity from the Santorum campaign:

Rick Santorum’s campaign insisted Friday the former Pennsylvania senator is still in the race despite mounting pressure even from voters in his home state that he pull out before the Keystone State’s primary April 24.

But Santorum has scheduled no public events over the holiday weekend and has made no major media buys, fueling speculation that he might quit. Polling in Pennsylvania that shows him slipping against front-runner Mitt Romney raises the prospect of an embarrassing home-state loss that could hurt his chances if he were to make a run for the nomination in 2016.

A Santorum campaign spokesman said the candidate had a busy slate of events scheduled for next week and promised that a list would be released soon.

If he decides to stay in the race, Rick Santorum will have to face some harsh facts about his campaign. Recently, a memo was released to the press from the Santorum campaign in which he outlined his belief that he can become the Republican nominee. However, Santorum's path to victory is based on some very flawed assumptions:

Santorum's camp said its internal count shows Romney with only 571 delegates while Santorum has 342. CNN's current delegate estimate, however, shows Romney with 657 and Santorum with 273.

"This race is much closer than the media and Establishment Republicans would like to report," stated the memo.

By CNN's count, Romney needs 44% of the delegates remaining to gain the nomination while Santorum needs 78%.

The campaign reached its rosier version of the delegate count making some assumptions that many experts don't believe will happen, including that Florida and Arizona will change positions and decide to award their delegates proportionally instead of winner take all. Santorum officials said the states broke Republican National Committee rules by not making their contests proportional and therefore conclude the RNC will take away some of Romney's delegates there.

Florida Republican Party Director of Communications Brian Hughes told CNN his state's rule was accepted by the RNC and therefore it will stay a winner take all state.

"It's a kind of a sad commentary on where they are that they have to make things up rather than face the reality of the status of their campaign," he told CNN.

Rick Santorum doesn't have a whole lot of time to decide. The Pennsylvania primary is in a few weeks and he has to decide whether he's in or out. Hopefully, he makes the right decision and bows out. 

Happy Easter 2012!!

I would like wish Christians everywhere a Happy Easter. Let us remember the true meaning of Easter. I would like to share "He Is Risen" as performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: 

The Media Is Intentionally Misleading Its Viewers On Mitt Romney's Mormon Faith

When it comes to the media covering the Presidential elections, conservatives don't have a lot of trust in these institutions to present all the facts in a straightforward manner. The famous example is "Rathergate" in which Dan Rather attempted to create news about President George W. Bush in which he claimed to have authentic documents about Bush's service in the national guard only to have those documents exposed as forgeries.

The media has learned not to repeat the same mistake again. Rather than manufacture news based on falsified documents, the have shifted to a more subtle form of creating news by selectively editing important key facts. The most recent example of this tactic can be seen in the Treyvon Martin case in which NBC edited the 911 police call to make it look like George Zimmerman said "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black" when in reality that is not what he said on the 911 police tapes. As a result, NBC is now conducting an internal investigation into a major breach of journalistic practices.

NBC pulled the same trick on Mitt Romney in which Martin Bashir aired an edited audio clip of an audience member asking a question about Romney's faith. Jeffery Meyer, pointed out that NBC distorted what Mitt Romney said because of their bias towards Republicans:

Bashir, who loves to attack Republicans on a daily basis, has decided to deliberately distort Romney and selectively edit his words so as to create a controversy where none exists.  Such journalistic malpractice is unacceptable and MSNBC needs to be held accountable.

The media isn't always subtle in its distortion of the facts. Sometimes it throws journalistic integrity out the window and reports false facts as if they were true. Watch the clip below for a good example of this:

 

CNN should be ashamed because the LDS Church has no position on interracial marriage amd it has never forbidden interracial marriage. Consider the following statements from past Mormon leaders. President Spencer W. Kimball, in a speech given to BYU students in 1965, had this to say about interracial marriage:

"Now, the brethren feel that it is not the wisest thing to cross racial lines in dating and marrying. There is no condemnation. We have had some of our fine young people who have crossed the lines. We hope they will be very happy, but experience of the brethren through a hundred years has proved to us that marriage is a very difficult thing under any circumstances and the difficulty increases in interrace marriages." (Source: Interracial Marriage Discouraged", Church News, June 17, 1978, p. 2.)

Here's another statement from Spencer W. Kimball: 

“When I said you must teach your people to overcome their prejudices and accept the Indians, I did not mean that you would encourage intermarriage. I mean that they should be brothers, to worship together and to work together and to play together; but we must discourage intermarriage, not because it is sin. I would like to make this very emphatic. A couple has not committed sin if an Indian boy and a white girl are married, or vice versa. It isn’t a transgression like the transgressions of which many are guilty. But it is not expedient. Marriage statistics and our general experience convince us that marriage is not easy. It is difficult when all factors are favorable. The divorces increase constantly, even where the spouses have the same general background of race, religion, finances, education, and otherwise. ” (Spencer W. Kimball, “The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball,” p. 302)

Another favorite tactic of the media is not distort the facts but to distort the viewer's perception of the facts as to elicit the desired response or reaction from the viewing audience either by reaffirming their biases or introducing them to it. Watch the clip for textbook application of this tactic below:

What Larry O’Donnell has done is use legitimate polling of people's willingness to vote for a candidate based on their religion as a means of cementing people's unwillingness to vote for a Mormon by distorting the history of the LDS Church. Noah Glyn, writing for National Review Online, summarizes O'Donnell's blatant and false distortion of the beginnings of the LDS religion:

Last night, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell attacked Mitt Romney, Mormonism, and Joseph Smith. According to O’Donnell, Smith only created Mormonism to justify his lax sexual mores.

In this case, O'Donnell admits his bias towards the LDS religion. As a result, O'Donnell isn't educating the public about the news as a news reporter should, but is preaching his gospel of religious bigotry to anyone who will listen. As a result, those who are already biased towards the LDS faith will have their beliefs reaffirmed and those who haven't had such a bias are now potentially infected with it.

The reason why the media has been dishonest in the way they cover Mitt Romney's faith is because many members of the media are liberal and are hostile to religion. Nancy French explains why the media has been untruthful about Mitt Romney's faith:

Secular leftists are often quite religious in their zeal to attack traditional values, and I’d say that they have Mormons in their crosshairs in large part because they’re quite effective in defending our culture. After all, there’s only 6 million Mormons in America, yet the media Left — from HBO to PBS to Broadway — has spent much of the last two election cycles flailing away at the LDS church.

In other words, the secular Left hates Mormons because they see the LDS church as a part of the same Judeo-Christian tradition we belong to; the same Judeo-Christian tradition they so despise. 

John Schroeder over at Article6 blog explains why the intentional distortion towards Mitt Romney's faith is unacceptable for a religiously diverse country as ours:  

We cannot take this bait.  These kinds of assaults – the “weirdness” of proxy baptism, polygamy as a justification for illicit sex – may have some appeal if you think Mormonism a “false” religion.  But here is the thing.  In a religiously pluralistic society like ours, if it stands against them, something similar will stand against us. 

Last year, it was revealed that Obama planned on attacking Mitt Romney's faith but that idea was immediately ridiculed. Recently, Senator Orrin Hatch asserted that Obama would go after Romney's faith and many Democrats immediately denied Obama would do that. The President knows he can't get 6 million Mormons in the United States to vote for him and that he may not have it in his election strategy to make Romney's faith an issue in the campaign. However, those in the media have already made it an issue in this election in which they will discourage as many Americans as they can to not vote for Romney by intentionally distorting their coverage of his faith.

Rick Santorum Considering Dropping Out Before Pennsylvania Primary

Given that Rick Santorum faces a possible embarrassing defeat in his home state, he's considering suspending his campaign:  

The possibility of a loss in his home state of Pennsylvania might force Rick Santorum to drop out of the Republican primary sooner than he’d planned, say GOP strategists.

Santorum is notoriously strong-willed, and those close to him say that party elders will not be able to convince him to exit the race if he thinks he has a shot at the Republican nomination.

But one of Santorum’s close friends told The Hill that while the former Pennsylvania senator remains confident about winning his home state and using that to build May momentum, if that confidence falters, he might exit the race. Pennsylvania state Sen. Jake Corman (R), a longtime friend of Santorum and his family, said if it appeared Santorum wasn’t going to win the state, the former senator could drop his campaign.

“He’s a realist; he doesn’t have his head in the clouds,” Corman told The Hill. “As long as he sees a pathway to the nomination he’s going to stay in it, but he won’t stay in it to prove a point. If he gets to the point where he doesn’t think he’ll be the nominee, he’ll get out.”

One of the big factors that is weighing heavily on Santorum's mind is facing the possibility of losing in his home state twice which would tarnish his political future:

Many Republican strategists argue that Santorum has resurrected his political career after a bad 2006 Senate loss with his surprisingly strong presidential campaign — but that another loss in his home state could undo all that work, leading to predictions that if he thinks he could lose Pennsylvania, he might bow out.

“If he loses Pennsylvania twice, that’s going to really hobble him in the future. That’d be very hard to live down,” said Kirsten Fedewa, Mike Huckabee’s 2008 communications director.

Another point for Rick Santorum that he will probably be considering is that his support is shrinking dramatically after suffering a humiliating three state loss just a few days ago

“There’s a point on the campaign trail where you start seeing diminishing returns, thinner crowds, you’re not getting the big boost on your website fundraising, the enthusiasm factor is dying down,” she said. “He’s going to be feeling it on the stump and seeing the impact on his campaign. He’s an anti-establishment candidate, so what the establishment does or doesn't do isn’t going to persuade him — but when he sees the intensity factor waning, that’s going to weigh heavily.”

Another factor that Rick Santorum is considering is that there is no realistic way for him to continue on in the race no matter how confident he feels in Pennsylvania and in the following primary elections. Dick Morris explains why: 

Rick Santorum has now punted April and is saying that we need to wait until May for him to rack up significant totals of delegates. Fat chance.

After DC, Maryland, and Wisconsin, Romney has about 640 delegates. He will probably win New York (95 delegates), Del (17), Ct (28), and RI (19) raising his total to about 770. He’ll lose Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri but he’ll get his share raising his total to 800 delegates). He could, and probably will, win Pennsylvania giving him 870. (Santorum doesn’t have delegates in each part of his home state).

Then comes May, Rick’s favorite month. But Romney will probably win Maine (24), Indiana (46), and Oregon (28) giving him just shy of 1,000 delegates. He’ll probably lose Arkansas (36), and might lose Kentucky (45), Nebraska (35), North Carolina (45). He will however pick up some portion of their delegations in the proportional representation states. And he’ll likely lose the big May primary – Texas with 155 votes. But since Texas votes by Congressional District, he’ll win his share. Most likely, he will exit May with over 1,000 delegates and could approach 1,100.

Then, by June 6th, he will vault past the 1,144 he needs for the nomination by winning California, New Jersey, Utah, South Dakota, Washington State, Montana, and New Mexico.

Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul not only have no chance at winning a majority of the delegates, but they also have no chance of deadlocking the convention. The numbers don’t add up.

Rick Santorum shouldn't have to think too hard about whether to drop out or not. All the evidence strongly indicates that he cannot win Pennsylvania since Mitt Romney is leading in the polls in that state, he cannot win any of the subsequent primary elections nor can he win the Republican nomination. Moreover, he can't even cause mischief by creating a brokered convention because the delegate math states that is not possible. 

Mitt Romney bowed out graciously when he realized that he could not win the Republican nomination and then worked hard to help McCain. Rick Santorum should do the same so that everyone can focus on making President Obama a one term President.  

Mitt Romney Wins Big In Wisconsin, Maryland & Washington D.C. Primary!!

Tonight was a big night for Mitt Romney. in which he won Maryland, Washington D.C. and Wisconsin. A combined total of 98 delegates were at stake in these states and a substantial majority of the delegates in each state. Each of these primary elections were winner take all states in which all the delegates were up for grabs. By winning tonight, Mitt Romney increased his massive lead over his Republican competitor.

In Maryland, Romney won 53% of the vote which allowed him to win all the 37 delegates available tonight. An interesting fact came from the Maryland exit polls in which Romney TIED Santorum in Maryland among the very conservative voters. Also, 41% of Maryland voters said that the most important quality that they wanted in a candidate was someone who can beat Obama. Mitt Romney's victory in Maryland pushes him past the half way point of getting the 1,114 delegates needed to become the GOP nominee: 

Maryland was expected to go to Mr. Romney, but the delegates he secured there pushed him past an important milestone on his quest to be the Republican presidential nominee: Mr. Romney is now more than halfway towards the 1,144 delegates he needs to mathematically win the nomination.

Maryland brings Mr. Romney's delegate total to 600 according to an ongoing count by The Associated Press. Rick Santorum, with 272 delegates, has less than half that amount.

Romney also won all of the 19 delegates in Washington D.C with 72 % of the vote  Rick Santorum was not able to get on the ballot in Washington D.C. and as a result, Romney got those delegates pretty much for free.

Finally, in Wisconsin, Mitt Romney won  21 delegates with 43% of the vote. Clearly, this was a good night for Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum wanted to take Mitt Romney out by any means possible tonight but  admitted that he doubted he could win Wisconsin after it became clear that Romney had erased his lead in that state in the weeks prior to the election.

Prior to this election night, the current delegate count stood as the following: Romney (568), Santorum (273), Gingrich (135) and Paul (50). Now the delegate count stands as pictured below:

Rick Santorum suffered an embarrassing loss tonight which demonstrates his declining influence in this primary race. He's stated that he would be open to becoming Mitt Romney's VP but Team Romney shot that down by stating he's not on their list.  Part of the reason why the Romney campaign doesn't want Santorum as their VP is that he doesn't really have much influence or clout inside or outside the Republican party. 

Despite losing badly to Romney, Rick Santorum remains undaunted and vows to fight on despite the fact that it is virtually impossible for him to win the Republican nomination because Mitt Romney Romney has collected 70% of delegates thus far (646), more than all the other other candidates combined (458). Given the impossibility of getting the Republican nomination, some people are questioning Santorum's sanity in pressing forward despite getting swept out by Mitt Romney.  However, Rick Santorum has indicated that he will stay in the race until the Pennsylvania primary.

Tonight's victory demonstrated the 2012 Republican primaries are over. Rick Santorum is in denial about this fact. However, it has been announced that Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Romney campaign will now be raising campaign funds together. That's an obvious sign that the Republican party already knows who the Republican nominee will be.

Another sign is that for the first time in the Romney's campaign, supporters who came to see Mitt's victory speech tonight had to walk through metal detectors and saw an increase in the number of Secret Service agents at campaign event.

The best thing about Mitt Romney's win tonight is that it marks the beginning of the general election against President Obama. Romney is already beginning to shift to the general election by spending more of his time attacking President Obama than focusing on contrasting himself with the other 2012 candidates.  Mitt gave an great speech tonight distinguishing himself from Obama and setting out his vision for America.

The battle between Obama and Mitt Romney is now on. Go Mitt Romney!